Another Non-TR “Technology Refresh” Happens With IBM i TR6

May 5, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

As you know, Big Blue released IBM i 7.6 and IBM i 7.5 Technology Refresh 6 (TR6) on April 8, with the expectation that both would ship to customers on April 18. IBM i 7.6 was detailed in announcement letter AD25-0031 and IBM i 7.5 TR6 was revealed in announcement letter AD25-0077. We’re all good there. And many of the features in IBM i 7.6 were backcast as a refresh into IBM i 7.5 with TR6, if you read the announcement letters.

IBM i 7.6 was available on April 18 as expected, but we know a bunch of people who have been looking for IBM i 7.5 TR6 on April 18 as well, and frankly, there were no people on IBM i 7.6 and IBM i 7.5 is being used by 32 percent or just under 10 percent of the base, depending on how you model the base from skinny survey data results, and therefore more people were looking for TR6 rather than IBM i 7.6. And April 18 came and went and there was still no IBM i 7.5 TR6 put out.

Our intrepid IBM i patching guru, Doug Bidwell from DLB Associates, put in a ticket to IBM Support, asking the question: “IBM i 7.5 TR6 – Where in the world are you?” Here is the response he got:

Hi Doug,

Unfortunately, starting this year, technology refresh has been split into a software and hardware refresh and the level 6 refresh was for software.

https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/1119129

For software, there is no single package specific to get these updates. They will be part of cumes, groups or potentially a product refresh. Information can be found here on this: https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/ibm-i-technology-refresh

The hardware refresh will continue to be updated/implemented as the Technology Refresh group (SF99957 for 7.5). There is a new cume that has been released (C5100750) that may have at least some of the specific new software enhancements. Otherwise it’s recommend (for software) to stay up to date with the cume/group PTFs to get these.

I apologize for some of the confusion as this is related to a shift by IBM on how to deliver these changes.

Thanks.

We can see how this situation has caused a certain amount of confusion. IBM i 7.5 TR6 is – as has happened a few times before as you can see from reading the Related Stories section, a TR that is not really rolled up as a single TR. This happened in 2020 with IBM i 7.3 TR8 and IBM i 7.4 TR2 and in 2022 with IBM i 7.3 TR12, in fact.

At least this time, it looks like IBM is making a special designation with IBM i 7.5 TR6-SW, as you can see in the enhancement landing pages for each release’s “base enhancements” when they are initially released and then the follow-on TR updates. See:

By the way, the landing page for IBM i 7.5 TR6 enhancements is pretty comprehensive and laid out in a visual way that has more data and context than the announcement letters. So it is useful. Still, you are going to have to hunt around for the functions in the PTF groups for where the functionality for IBM i 7.5 TR6 is actually available for download.

Presumably, when there are hardware and software enhancements at the same time again in the fall with IBM i 7.5 TR7, these will actually all be rolled up again in a single package, including all of the bits that were in the TR6 update as well as any new things that come with TR7.

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